


Answer Me

by Michelle_A_Emerlind



Series: Conversations in Verse [2]
Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Angst, M/M, Rickyl poetry, Spoilers for 6x10, yes more poetry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-01
Updated: 2016-03-01
Packaged: 2018-05-24 05:28:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 485
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6142999
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Michelle_A_Emerlind/pseuds/Michelle_A_Emerlind
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rick answers Daryl's question.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Answer Me

_What are you doing? Why are you doing this? If you said you loved me, why? Tell me fucking why, Rick? Goddamn. I should leave you._

 

And so if you must know,  
here.

Here are the things  
that I have to lose  
(in loose order,  
descending,  
how they slip  
through my fingers  
like starlight,  
like fire and how  
it burns the flesh  
from my knuckles,  
the feel of blood  
on my teeth, how  
it cools to my tongue):

These walls. How  
they hold and break.  
How they are always  
letting in or keeping  
out. How they are always  
only a breath away  
from our voices, how  
we cry when they fall,  
and more--

\--the people in these walls,  
the short-haired girl  
who thinks she is a woman,  
the boy who thinks  
he has found peace,  
a preacher child,  
a couple shaking,  
a lost man, a love  
poisoned girl, and others,  
others, others, names  
that flit across my skin  
like souls that have sunk  
down into my shuddering  
veins.

My daughter and the way  
she sounds at night,  
how she will sound  
when she understands  
that death is more than  
the sweetness of decay  
in the nose, the sight  
of eyes that don’t  
flicker right.

My son. His one, cold,  
fireless eye.

And her, her who you  
hate and her who you  
love and her who has  
taken from you what  
you thought could never  
be taken because you  
thought it could never  
be given away even  
though I have given  
it away between her  
thighs (how you must  
hate me and how i must  
hate myself how i must  
keep going with this  
because you asked didn’t  
you and didn’t i have to  
start telling you why you  
must know why you must  
know why and so i must  
tell you why, why this--)

That they are  
what I have  
to lose. I think  
of losing them.  
Losing the memory  
of a wife  
dead. Losing  
the feeling of a girl  
growing. Losing  
the sight  
of a boy becoming  
a man better  
than I was.

Losing the feel  
of her skin on  
mine and how  
my hand now  
burns with it.

But losing you.  
But losing you.  
But losing you.

I can’t think of it. The thought never comes.  
The day is unbearable, the sky wide and still,  
the ground unmoving, how it would grow  
cold, how everything would be cold, how  
there would not be starlight, how there would  
not be fire. How there would not be you and there  
would not be me and if I never have you, if I  
never do, then I can never lose you (how I  
know this is wrong, but still, my love, my love,  
my only true love-- _all the others never existed_ \--  
how could I lose you?)

So I won’t.  
So I won’t  
have you.  
So I will  
take something  
else.

Everything burns.  
Until it dies.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [hephaestion replies](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6192181) by [skarlatha](https://archiveofourown.org/users/skarlatha/pseuds/skarlatha)




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